Crime & Punishment

The one thing I hope the CCP GM's who consider this issue do, is check the most vocal complainers about miner-bumping in this thread, and who send in petitions ingame, and see how many of them either don't have Ice Harvesting trained, or trained it on their 5 year old account only a few months ago specifically to come mine in the New Order occupied systems. The hilarity of people who have never mined before, and who now only mine because of the New Order, claiming that in their opinion the New Order is harmful to mining in general, is beyond description. And yet, this is precisely the case. The most vocal anti-miner bumpers fit this description perfectly. If the senior GMs pay attention to people's actions, and not to their words, they will perceive an entirely different scenario, one in which minerbumping is seen to be beneficial emergent gameplay.

Bumping is fine, both freighter and miner, both involve a group of players claiming a system or 3 for themselves, then choosing to try and control certain activities in those systems.

I'll give some miners props though, sometimes they'll come back and have a go, they normally die hilariously, as proved by the tormenter that tried to take on a logistics orca, that was fitted for bait, but props to the guys that do.

There is emergent gameplay from both the miners and the bumpers, the bumpers is obvious, the miner not so much, there are mining corps that support what the bumpers are doing, they either purchase corp permits or require that their mining members have a licence, they've adapted, they actually talk in local, a rare sight indeed in an icebelt, licence holders receive orca support if it can be provided, most union like. The side benefit is removal of the competition.

EVE appeals to me (and many others) because of its freedom. CCP provides the game and basically allows you to determine your own priorities and playstyle. You get a ship and endless amounts of space, after which you have to find your way of enjoying it. Obviously a few limitations are there, like Concord and a set of aggro rules made up over almost a decade. The reasons for these limitations are simple; without any there could not be a game, with too many it could as well be a single player game.

The whole issue of minerbumping is essentially about this. Is the game unplayable with minerbumpers? As an agent and former miner I can safely say you can still mine. The universe is endless and the New Order is only in one field. Even if the masses would join our movement, the abundance of icefields make full controll by bumpers unlikely. Other then that there are ways to make bumping a real challenge. So skill also helps, bumpers just contribute to the game that way, making mining a skilled job rather then an afk activity.

With rules against bumping, implemented because too many tears were spilled and not because it is impossible to mine, EVE would lose both its multiplayer nature and its unique danger-rich environment. All that because people were too lazy to improve their fitting, to change tactics or to simply move out.

Minerbumping adds something else to this game, it wakes up a comatose part of the game where botting, mutliboxing and afkness would make it the ugly element of EVE. To top that James 315 managed to build a complete roleplaying storyline to make the bumping a natural element of the game. For those that complain about harassment, I do wonder what the whole idea of ships with guns and shields made you think think this game is about. It is where people shoot stuff, harassment like asking for a game currency or bumping is the most innocent part of that. Imagine petitions from people saying that shooting them amounts to attempted theft of even worse an attempt at assault. Do not compare in-game actions to real life, that does not make sense.

Miner bumping is a beautiful example of emergent gameplay


Edit: Rule 24 Off topic posting is prohibited - ISD Tyrozan

I'm a few weeks into the game, but here's my nickel for what it's worth.


Edit: Rule 24 Off topic posting is prohibited - ISD Tyrozan

But, not sure I'm for bumping as it stands now. Seems like there's no real action you can take to truly defeat the bumpers - whether you're AFK or not. I mean, other than paying the 10M ISK.

I was thinking the new mining frigate might be a possible solution in Retribution as far as avoiding "the bump", whipping around an asteroid at speed and dumping to a can. At least if the bumpers try to can flip you can shoot them if you're in a group and you're organized / prepared. But, what then stops the bumpers from bumping your hauler when it comes for the can(s)? And, no doubt the yield, even from a dedicated ORE mining frigate, won't match the lowliest barge.

I don't believe in an AFK miner fix. You're playing a game, be in the game. With that said, maybe, as someone earlier alluded to, mining itself is what needs fixing. Because, with all due respect to miners - it's boring as all heck.


Edit: Rule 24 Off topic posting is prohibited - ISD Tyrozan

Anyway, think I'm staring to ramble; time to step off for a bit.

Cheers,

For folks not quite familiar with the situation that's been going on and why I deem it harassment (as does this fellow apparently), let me clue you in to what's happening in Abudban (and what has happened in Tolle). This also contains bulletpoints refuting some of the "methods miners can use to retaliate". Acronyms used here:

NO = New Order
NOA = New Order "Agents"

- NOA appear in Local chat and demand 10M ISK in English only, else be bumped "or worse".

- Recipient must respond pubicly in Local chat in some manner.

- NOA insists they only do this to "AFK players mining" or "bot-like players mining", but there are many reports of this happening to people who are active in-game (keep reading for how this could happen).

- In recent days (since roughly November 25th) NOA have begun suicide ganking for lack of payment. Suicide ganking IS permitted per CCP as a tactic, and so I am not complaining about that -- instead, I am stating that the "bumping" tactic may have been a catalyst for something more major.

- Payment of ISK does not guarantee player is no longer harassed.

- Amount of time the recipient has to respond to NOA varies; sometimes it maybe up to 1.5 hours, other times it has been as short as 13 seconds.

- Short durations of time do not give non-English-speaking players proper amount of time to respond (in any language), which could be construed as harassment. This also makes the assumption they can read/understand English to begin with. EVE is officially supported in English, Russian, German, and Japanese.

- Failure to respond results in bumping "or worse".

- Failure to respond could be one of many non-technical reasons, such as:

** Bio (restroom/bathroom) breaks (more on that in a moment)
** Player not watching Local chat (minimised window, etc. -- all permitted)
** Health issues (examples include IBS, IBD, Chron's disease, diabetes, etc.)
** Real life emergency situations (too many to list here)
** Recipient does not understand/cannot read English

- CCP does not have any rules against players with the above disabilities not being permitted to play EVE. Meaning: players cannot be *expected* to be at their computers at all times.

- Regarding bio breaks: NO has stated clearly that EVE players are not allowed to use their restroom facilities without NOA consent first:

http://www.minerbumping.com/2012/10/new-order-bathroom-protocol.html

This should absolutely be deemed a form of harassment. I can expand on this (it's quite personal) if need be -- just ask.

- Recipient aggravation is accomplished in a different way than classic or historic griefing or "general gamer aggression". Tactics seen so far include but are not limited to:

** Multiple NOA (in some cases, 10+) bombarding player in Local chat with demands or insults/insinuations (if pressured)
** One or more NOA bumping the player while another simultaneously demands player respond in local else risk further damage (i.e. suicide ganking)

- NOA as a majority (95% of the time) are all in separate corporations with no alliances. This causes the following complications when it comes to miners being able to retaliate:

** Recipient cannot feasibly declare wardec on every corporation when being harassed by multiple NOA simultaneously -- success rate here is roughly 0.01% by my guess (just pulling numbers out of my butt)
** Wardec situation can be worked around by disbanding corporation (and this has been done by James 315 himself multiple times and admitted on his blog at that). Another method is described by an uninvolved corporation (tag: R-RIN). Quoting: "... and if wardec'd, it takes 24 hours for the wardec to go into effect, and it takes 24 hours to let the dummy account take over the corp as it's sole member.. Yeah, do the math.. if someone wants to waste their money wardecing us, it's their decision to do so.. Like I said, we have no interest in that type Gameplay and we have a plan to ensure that we can continue to play regardless ..."
** Recipient cannot feasibly declare bounties on every individual involved -- too expensive, particularly when multiple NOA involved
** Bounty declaration cannot be used as retaliation due to following known "defect" of bounties:
- Recipient declares bounty on NOA
- Owner of NOA logs in via separate client with alt character
- Alt kills NOA and collects bounty ISK. This technique has also been used by James 315 to subvert bounty.

- With regards to language barrier, there is already evidence of this causing problems. I've cut this out of my explanation because it's quite long but can provide it in another post.

- NO has stated clearly that players "in their systems" are not permitted to file petitions with CCP else risk effects. The exact quote is here: http://www.minerbumping.com/p/the-code.html

"To minimize the workload of our GMs, miners shall not file petitions against the Supreme Protector or his Agents. Failure to abide by this rule is an automatic Red Pen violation (see below)."

- Filing petitions has historically resulted in GMs closing the petitions. This has been stated by multiple users who have complained. I do not know if the petitions stated "I'm being mining bumped" and thus since "bumping is permitted" they were closed, or what.

When players are harassing others as a result of things like bio breaks and language barriers, and demanding players cannot file petitions... well, do the math. It doesn't take a genius to see that this is harassment in all forms, just covered up in a sly manner.

Edit: Rule 24 Off topic posting is prohibited - ISD Tyrozan.

In addition to my previous post if you remove ways of affecting highsec players without adding others you make the game itself less interesting. Look at the forum threads and the two opposing websites, something as simple as bumping has spawned as examples of this. Without this simple mechanic, bumping, none of that would have happened and highsec would be that much more dull. Ask yourself this CCP, "do I really want to remove a key tool in creating content for my game just to appease a minority of loud whiners?"

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